The political pieces she later wrote for The New York Review of Books - beginning with the 1988 presidential campaign, on through the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the high drama of the 2000 face-off in Florida - were less original, less idiosyncratic, but reading them in retrospect, they are oddly prophetic about the growing gap between the electorate and the political elites, and the growing dysfunction of the entire system.

In two dazzling collections of essays, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and “The White Album,” Joan Didion used her own experiences - and observations and anxieties - as a kind of index to the times, as America lurched through the convulsions of the 1960s and ’70s.

Here, too, is the beginning of her thinking about the West, its landscape, the western women who were heroic for her, and her own lineage, all of which would appear later in her acclaimed 2003 book, Where I Was From.SOUTH AND WEST: FROM A NOTEBOOK By Joan Didion Foreword by Nathaniel Rich 126 pages. Though Didion never wrote the piece, watching the trial and being in San Francisco triggered thoughts about the city, its social hierarchy, the Hearsts, and her own upbringing in Sacramento. And from a different notebook: the 'California Notes' that began as an assignment from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial of 1976. She writes about the stifling heat, the almost viscous pace of life, the sulfurous light, and the preoccupation with race, class, and heritage she finds in the small towns they pass through.

She interviews prominent local figures, describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a visit with Walker Percy, a ladies' brunch at the Mississippi Broadcasters' Convention.

From the bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking: two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks-writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer.Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays and articles-and here is one such draft that traces a road trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Joan didion west and south